“Do you not know that I may as well surrender the contest directly as to make any order the obvious purpose of which would be to return fugitive slaves?"

By March we find him writing to Andrew Johnson, military governor of Tennessee and afterward Vice-President and President of the United States:

"I am told you have at least thought of raising a negro military force. In my opinion the country now needs no specific thing so much as some man of your ability and position to go to this work. When I speak of your position, I mean that of an eminent citizen of a slave state and himself a slaveholder. The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of force for restoring the Union. The bare sight of fifty thousand armed and drilled black soldiers upon the banks of the Mississippi would end the rebellion at once; and who doubts that we can present that sight if we but take hold in earnest? If you have been thinking of it, please do not dismiss the thought."

To General Banks a few days later he says that to raise colored troops is "very important, if not indispensable." To General Hunter he writes privately on April 1:

"I am glad to see the accounts of your colored force at Jacksonville, Florida. I see the enemy are driving at them fiercely, as is to be expected. It is important to the enemy that such a force shall not take shape and grow and thrive in the South, and in precisely the same

proportion it is important to us that it shall.

Hence the utmost caution and vigilance is necessary on our part. The enemy will make extra efforts to destroy them, and we should do the same to preserve and increase them."

Rage at the South over the use of negro troops was unbounded. In 1862 Jefferson Davis had declared Generals Hunter and Butler, and their commissioned officers, outlaws, robbers, and criminals, who, if captured, were not to be treated as prisoners of war but to be held for execution. When the proclamation was issued he extended this principle to all commissioned officers captured in the territory covered. The Confederate Secretary of War wrote to General Kirby Smith the suggestion that white men leading negro troops "be dealt with red-handed on the field of war or immediately after." Such amenities naturally raised at the North a demand for reciprocity. In the summer the well-known negro Frederick Douglass, who was recruiting colored soldiers, called on the President and said that if these troops were to be a success four things were necessary:

1. Colored soldiers must have the same pay as white soldiers.

2. The government must compel the Confederates to treat captured negro soldiers as prisoners of war.

3. Brave and meritorious service should lead to promotion precisely as with white soldiers. 4. If any negro soldiers were murdered in cold blood, the North should retaliate in kind.

Lincoln, in reply, Douglass tells us, described the opposition to employing black soldiers at all, and the advantage to the colored race that would result from employment in defence of their country. He regarded it as an experiment. He had with difficulty got them into United States uniforms, against the opposition of those who proposed a different dress, and that was something gained. In the matter of pay, also, he felt that some concession must be made to prejudice; and besides it was not proved that the negro could make as good a soldier as the white man. I assure you," the President added, however, "that in the end they shall have the same pay as white soldiers." He admitted the justice of the demand for promotion, and said that he would insist on their being entitled to all the privileges of prisoners of war; but in regard to retaliation he said, with a quiver in his voice, "once begun, I do not know where such a measure would stop," and added that, although if he could get hold of the actual perpetrators of the crime the case might be different, he could not kill the innocent for the guilty. He did, however, after the summer victories, order that "for every soldier of the

United States killed in violation of the laws of the war a rebel soldier shall be executed." As it turned out, practically nothing came of the threats on either side.

Toward the white soldiers, with whom he purposely came in contact as much as possible, his feelings seemed to become if possible kinder as their own stability diminished. He pardoned to an extent which drove his generals and the Secretary of War into despair. "If," he once said, "a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one, but after he is once dead we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be, so the boy should be pardoned." General Butler says that the President promised to let him execute whomever he chose, but did not keep his word, frequently giving orders to have some convicted person sent to the Dry Tortugas. The same general reminded him that the bounties given for enlistment led to desertions, so that the men could go home and enlist in other regiments, -and this practice of "bounty-jumping" soon became frequent.

"How can it be stopped?" asked Lincoln. "Shoot every deserter," said Butler.

"You may be right," replied the President, probably are; but Lord help me, how can I have a butcher's day every Friday in the Army of the Potomac ?"

In a case of cowardice he said that a man could not always control his legs; or that he never felt sure he might not run away himself if he were in battle. This was mainly jocose, for there is little doubt of his personal bravery. General Butler tells us that when Lincoln visited his department he rode six miles within three hundred yards of the enemy, where officers inspected him through their glasses, and he refused to make his position more safe.

Schuyler Colfax' gives a scene from the early days of the war. When Judge Holt, the judgeadvocate-general of the army, laid the first case before the President and explained it, he replied that he would wait a few days until he had more time to read the testimony.

When the judge read the next case Lincoln said, “I must put this by until I can settle in my mind whether this soldier can better serve the country dead than living."

To the third he remarked that as the general commanding the brigade would be in Washington in a few days he would wait and talk it over with him.

Finally there came a very flagrant case. A soldier in the crisis of a battle demoralized his regiment by throwing down his gun and hiding

1 A number of interesting anecdotes by men who knew Lincoln are to be found in a volume of reminiscences edited by A. T. Rice.